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If it's not one thing it's another!
Moving house is a costly affair, so having long-term storage for the Princess and spares was a bit of a boon financially, especially with the welding and painting being offered in with the bargain. This has now all been shot to pieces.
Unfortunately, there's an issue with some flooding where the Princess is being kept, not halfway up the walls sort of flooding, but there's a serious water leak somewhere that's causing a lot of bits of gardens to go boggy, some bits to get washed away and lots of people to be unable to use their gardens at all. It's got worse just lately. In fact, it's got so bad that the water company need to dig up several gardens including the one that Princess is stored in, along with the shed housing her spares and the garage she's resting in.
Very bad news. Especially since I'm flat broke. Luckily, I put out a shout after trying a few other dead ends and someone kindly helped with a loan to cover the cost of moving the car. I'm also probably selling the Lotus alloys (someone offered to buy them for at least as much as I paid for them) out of necessity to cover some other costs, not something I'm thrilled about doing but in a rare head-over-heart moment of all the things I've got that I could sacrifice to save the Princess they're the easiest, it'll be a while before they're on the car given the other work she needs and I should be able to pick up another set one day.
So hopefully this weekend I'll be loading up the Princess and all the spares and ferrying her up to my housemate's yard where the car will get the attention and tools needed to get her structurally and mechanically sound if not pretty. She'll then be MoT'd and taxed as soon as possible and pressed back into daily service and I shall be a happy, happy person.
Target: my birthday at the start of November.
Happily, the unit is only about a mile from home so I can walk it if I need to, certainly easier to get to without a working car than the current storage 100 miles away from me.
Clearly, being apart for a fortnight is too long and we must be reunited.
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Last Edit: Aug 5, 2014 23:22:07 GMT by Deleted
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Well that does sound like a right old 'situation' but one that also sounds like it's been resolved very quickly indeed which is good to hear. It's also good to hear that you will be nearer to the Princess meaning you can help with the work needed or just cast your beady eye over it every now and again...!!!
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***GARAGE CURRENTLY EMPTY***
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Stockton, not a million miles away from us! Hope you can make it over to the OK Diner do on the 2nd Tuesday of the month some time
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Three trailer guys can't help. A fourth isn't responding. A fifth (friend) only has an A-frame and a Rover 216 to help with so tomorrow unless I've heard otherwise we're going to try some other leads to try and get this all moving on Sunday. How frustrating!
Also, a friend has offered me his cracking little Pug 106 5-door Graduate edition for the price of free (delivered too) because he wants it to go to a loving home. It will serve very well in the interim and the insurance is actually very affordable on it so we'll see how that pans out. The worst things with the Pug are the Halfords wheel trims and some lacquer peel on the roof, every other part of it is spotless and it's terrific fun to drive.
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Phew, we got a self-drive beavertail hired that we're collecting in the morning. I should really go to bed.
Just a teensy bit excited about tomorrow, it's going to be full of Princesses and nutters car enthusiasts.
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Aug 10, 2014 22:13:10 GMT
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Today we drove down to Derbyshire from Stockton-on-Tees in possibly the least comfortable beavertail ever built. Still, it did good on fuel and was competent at hauling Princess. Was glad that we could hire a self-drive vehicle, several trailer options fell through, most of which were man-with-trailer deals. Reason for the self-drive being better was that the beige car not only had a flat battery, but all of the spares had to be packed and the driver's seat bolted in. This was all done while the dregs of hurricane Bertha were rattling about the place. The new owner for the red Princess also arrived and more problems arose with that... full story at a later date. One big annoyance was that after getting the driver's seat bolted in, as I got out of the cabin there was a very audible and perfect 'pop' before the side with the replacement sphere slowly began to sink. Unlike before, there was no puddle of green blood under the car and in fact the fluid that's disappeared isn't really visible aside from one tiny little drop hanging off the bottom of the displacer I'd replaced. I suspect the inner diaphragm has blown and filled the gas side of the unit with fluid. I can hope it's a bust union or pipe but I know it's going to be the sphere and I know that's going to be a nuisance to source and afford. I've not even driven the car on this replacement sphere so it smarts just that bit more than it might normally. Other than that, once some charge was put in the battery she fired up as reliably as ever and trundled out of the sinking garage - there's some serious flooding issues, the garage and shed are actually all moving because of the saturation of the ground - down onto the road and had the good tyres swapped for bad so the red Princess can be safely driven away before loading her up onto the beavertail. Unfortunately I couldn't hang around to help out with the red car because we had many miles to drive and a deadline for returning the truck. I really wanted to help out, but the amount of time it took to pack and load and swap things meant I had no time left. On the way back we stopped off for some much needed food. I've been seriously impressed with Little Chef lately and this one was no exception to that. Superb service, polite staff, excellent food and not a bad price tag, an actual pleasure to sit down for something to eat. Anyway, there was something interesting in the car park so obviously we parked next to it. Then it was a very, very boring drive back in horrible weather. Even as a passenger this particular truck was hard work, I don't think the seats were designed for human beings to sit in. Just miles and miles and miles of this. Horrible. 13 hours after setting off this morning, the beige one is now safely tucked up next to the newer floaty bus and over the course of the coming week I hope to get stuck in to the work needed to get her fixed. There's not a huge amount to do, but I'm going to tackle as many of even the small jobs as I can before she returns to the road... it may get a bit out of hand.
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Aug 12, 2014 16:59:54 GMT
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We have daylight, we have motivation, we got our arses down to the unit to get sorting and inspecting the Princess. Got the (knackered) tyres pumped up and the car emptied out so I could see what was what. I also had a short drive around the yard to get a feel for the suspension. When the last sphere went it was very hard and bouncy on one side, but now apart from a slight list to port it feels much as it ought. The car also hasn't dropped any further than this, which is considerably less wonky than when the last sphere (I'm calling them spheres for the sake of convenience) blew on me. With everything out of the car, the suspension came up a bit and doesn't look catastrophically low, just like it needs a pump up on one side. There's also no hint of hydragas fluid under the car anywhere. I even looked in the pocket at the front where the front spheres live and there's no evidence of hydragas hiding in there. This really makes me think it's an internal failure in one of the units. After bouncing each corner, the front passenger corner is very, very hard. After jacking the car up to inspect underneath and letting it down some bounce returned but it quickly became hard again. The rear corner on the same side feels exactly as it ought with good travel still. The car also sits a bit lower on the front corner, whichever way you park it. All is still good on the other side, the rear arch gap is, amusingly, spot on, though the front is about 2-3" too large. When I was under the car I looked for damage. There is some water and oil sprayed about which is from the broken thermostat housing/cap and the fuel pump starting to leak oil again after the car has been stood for a while. I did notice some fairly fresh damage to the hydragas pipe which appears to be slightly crushed on the bend but it didn't appear to be leaking. At the back, where there was one small drop of hydragas fluid, there's nothing evident at all now. Everything back here is dry as a bone, but as you go further towards the front of the car the pipe gets wetter so I'm wondering if some hydragas fluid leaked down the length of the pipe to the lowest point, which would be this unit. Had a look at the flexi hose too and that is nice and dry, there's no sign of any split or swelling and the union to the sphere also appears dry. Of note is the lack of any hydragas fluid odour at the back of the car, there is an aroma of it to the front. I will inspect this more properly but I think it means dismantling portions of the car to do so now. I'm suspecting the front passenger sphere instead of the rear passenger one now. I do have a spare on what's left of the orange car, I just have to hope I can liberate it before anything happens to the remains. If not, at least front spheres are easier to acquire than rear ones and aren't handed. Have a pretty picture to finish this update with.
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Aug 12, 2014 20:31:52 GMT
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Your car is the reason I joined up here, I had a 2.2 back in 92 same colour good luck with getting it back on the road I would love another one day I have a soft spot for old BL cars
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Aug 12, 2014 20:45:02 GMT
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Now that is a very flattering statement you've made there, hopefully I shall continue to keep you here with my exploits! This one is trying my patience a bit lately, but there's been far more trying things in my life than a stubborn old car lately so I think she can be forgiven. When they're not being tarts, these old things are superb, literally wouldn't change mine for anything, not even a seemingly better Princess.
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Sept 14, 2014 23:39:51 GMT
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Artwork and JMP Restorations - @jmpclassicresto on Twitter - have been keeping me *very* busy since I last posted here. That's not to say the Princess has been completely neglected. There was a day recently when I managed to get things together enough to trek down south again to collect what was left of the orange donor car. First thing to do was get the engine and 'box out before Will and Joe arrived to help load up their trailer. The generosity of fellow enthusiasts often surprises me, it really shouldn't by now, and I'm very grateful for them offering to lend their trailer and grunt to shift a lot of very useful and valuable spares for me. The engine and 'box had to be left behind, but another Princess owner who uses his car daily made very good use of them and saved me from eBay fees, so it wasn't all bad. Off we set, with me and the other half in his Porsche (which I detest) leading the way to begin with. Eventually we sort of ended up playing tag, the little Puglet was amazingly competent even with a trailer stacked high with Princess goodies... until we got to any sort of hill. ... and it might be overfuelling a little bit. When we arrived, Will (on the left) and I (in my fetching work clothes) surveyed the wreckage of our achievement. We'd managed to bring up four doors, a full nose end, several boot lids and bumpers, a stack of Lotus alloys, probably 6 steel wheels, a bonnet, a rear crosstube... there's probably more as I'm running off memory here. The following two days saw me busy in the yard with an angle grinder and rattle gun merrily removing all items of value. Steering rack, hydragas and brake pipes (for fittings and pattern making), a useful front wing, full front sheet metal for repairs, two hydragas spheres, pair of hubs complete with calipers and the upper and lower wishbones all came off and have been stored ready for me to refurbish them. By the time I was done there was hardly anything for the scrapman to take away. Shame about that bumper, very straight but completely rotten. Likewise the wing I left on the car, even more rot and fibreglass was hiding in it and all of the useful section of arch was of no use at all as a result. Not only did I find even more rot but one of the hydragas sphere pockets was jammed full of acorns and hazelnuts. Some furry little creature had obviously enjoyed living in this and stashing lots of noms for later. After I'd stripped all that lot I didn't have a chance to work on the Princess again because of helping to complete a customer car... ...and getting caught up with customer artwork that goes back to just before I moved house. I've been a very, very busy little bee lately and this weekend was a much needed break from everything. I'm hoping to get the Princess into the unit and onto the ramps so I can make a start on the welding this week/end and to finish what I started with the spare dashboard that also came out of the orange donor car. Since the veneer and the varnish were shot on this insert it was ideal to try out what metallic purple would look like, I'm satisfied with the test run so now I'll take it all back, spend ages smoothing the panel and then spray it up properly. All the black plastic bits will get properly detailed with a touch of chrome so the whole thing ends up looking a bit more finished and that should see the interior looking about as finished as it needs to. We shall see what happens. I have a lot of work ahead of me to get the bodywork sorted but none of it is insurmountable.
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Sept 15, 2014 8:05:09 GMT
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Amazing to see such a great update...! Nice one...
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***GARAGE CURRENTLY EMPTY***
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Sept 15, 2014 17:41:53 GMT
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The weather today has been pretty miserable, and normally that would stop me working, but this week I have the opportunity to crack on with the welding the Princess needs so Mikeknight and I pushed her into the unit to get her up on the ramps and take a look properly at what needed doing. I was actually amazed at how solid things are and how much underseal is left. Apart from the really bad corner, it all looks in reasonably good fettle under there and far better than I'd expected. The exhaust is now blowing quite badly though, I'm entirely sure from where, and there's some new damage to the passenger footwell that looks like someone has jacked under it for some reason, it's very fresh as the areas missing paint inside the cabin haven't even flash rusted. There's a lot of oil here for some reason. I think it's coming from this selector rod seal in the back of the gearbox, it seems to be the most oily part of the engine back here. Rear valance in surprisingly good fettle, I was expecting this to be frilly by now and it's not. This is the driver's front corner where there's been a bad patch applied in the past. You can see where the wing has also separated from the sill. I've got repair panels for this area, thankfully. And this is the rear end, the bit I made a start on today. It really is very bad but not Austin 1100 levels of bad. There's some perforation in the floor pan as well but what you see here is as bad as it gets, where there looks to be good metal there really is which is reassuring. After cutting a rather large hole to patch the biggest bit of problem in the floor pan I got the welder out. It is one of these. Fiddled about with the settings until I could get it to do a decent tack weld and ended up here on 0.6mm wire. It was fine at tacking, but any attempt to lay a seam was ridiculously poor. None of the horrendous spitting that the Xantia threw at me, happily, but the wire kept stop-starting no matter what I did with the tension. Cleaned the earth point to no noticable improvement. I think the nozzle/tip is fubarred, I know I'm not as bad a welder as the end result makes me out to be. I persevered as best I could but I wasn't feeling it at all. Something is wrong with the welder and I couldn't work out what. I don't know if it is the tip at fault, the settings or just me, but it just didn't sit right with me at all. I'm getting decent penetration on the welds and occasionally I'm getting very good small stitches going down but the majority of the time it welds and lays a spot, then the wire sort of jams, it tries to feed again by which point I've moved the gun and it makes this horrible dotty weld that doesn't do the job at all. I did flapwheel it back and found the new patch has stitched quite securely to the edge I persevered with and is now one piece of floor so that's something, but I suspect I'll cut this out and do it again because something just isn't right for it to weld like this. As you can see, it's a pretty large patch I'm letting in. I'm starting with the floor section first as that will lend strength back to the weakest bits of this corner, then I'll do the inner sill before cutting away the outer sill and repairing that and the arch. The inner sill only needs about an inch deep patch for the very tail end of the sill and it hasn't rotted any of the pressed shapes away, just the flat sheet. I was hoping to get the big patch stitched in and make some headway on the inner sill today. Once that's in I can work on the next section of floor where the strengthening bar is which ideally needs the spotwelds drilling out and a new panel letting in before re-spotwelding it in place. Welding is a remarkably similar discipline to painting and sewing, just with more chance of red hot blobs of molten metal attacking you.
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Rich
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 6,256
Club RR Member Number: 160
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Sept 15, 2014 19:09:03 GMT
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You want to practice pulse welding, where you overlap individual beads of weld. Sticking thin sheets in and trying to keep a continuous bead is too hard without blowing a hole. Look it up and have a practice. It's much neater
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Clement
Europe
ambitious but rubbish
Posts: 2,095
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Sept 15, 2014 19:44:49 GMT
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Yay for news! I see you've started welding, I'm fairly sure it's the single most useful skill for a serial tat owner I properly laughed at the Princess-nose pictures, it must have been pretty involved to drive a 106 with this behind in a trailer.
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Sept 15, 2014 20:22:16 GMT
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Welding is something I've always been able to do adequately and tidily. You can imagine my frustration with the above. I reckon there's a number of consumable items on the welder that need replacing from doing a bit of reading up and question asking. In the meantime I'll have a proper look at the machine tomorrow when I'm back at the unit and undo this patch until I've sorted the welder out.
I've never practised pulse welding, but once I know the welding is working good I'll give it a try. If I can get my welding up to a decent standard I get to make some holes in a Flavia go away.
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Sept 15, 2014 20:31:05 GMT
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Has the wire got damp and started to go a tiny bit rusty - that can cause random jams. Isn't there a thread on modifying the wire feed on that machine somewhere?
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Sept 16, 2014 10:05:44 GMT
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I get this problem with my cheap Kende MIG. Anything more severe than a very shallow radius on the feed to the torch causes extra friction and the feed motor slows or jams. That includes were the feed goes into the torch as it droops there unless supported by a bit of the car or a knee. Also check the metal drive wheel for the wire feed. It has 2 grooves for different wire sizes on mine and can be swapped around. Make sure your using the correct groove for your wire. I'm no expert welder but I hope that helps.
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sal
Part of things
Mk2 Cavalier CD
Posts: 240
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Sept 16, 2014 15:50:14 GMT
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I've got a smaller clarke machine than yours but had the same issues you are having and it was due to the swan neck needing replaced. Cost around a tenner from machine mart and takes about ten minutes to replace. This is the type of thing but there are a couple of variations in the part www.machinemart.co.uk/shop/product/details/clarke-industrial-swan-neck
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Sept 16, 2014 18:42:40 GMT
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Before I left the unit earlier today I did get the welder to actually weld, it's been a fairly trying day for me, not been in a particularly positive headspace. I did a few practice runs on some scrap and was getting some tolerable, if not pretty, bits of weld. I'm going to practice more on some more scrap before I tackle anything on the car but I'm feeling a bit more confident. Fitting a new tip and shroud and setting the welder to 'factory' settings helped immensely with the quality of the weld it now gives me. The issue with the wire feed was cured by unfastening it from the unit and letting it untwist itself, I now get a lovely smooth continuous feed of wire. I do think I'm moving too fast with the torch, a habit from stick welding thin stuff I think, so I've got to get the feel for it again. I feel very out of practice, which probably isn't much of a surprise as it's got to be about two years since I last used a MIG properly, but it'll come back to me. On the reverse, it looks a lot more like there's some penetration happening now. After clearing my head by getting away from the unit for an hour I headed back and was greeted with an Alfa I could get excited about, the pearlescent purple on this 2000 GTV made me rethink the purple I wanted on the Princess all over again, combining it with that biscuit-and-brown cloth and vinyl interior was just perfect. Not one of JMP's Alfas this time around, but the chap that brought it over does mainly fibreglass work for us. This one was all steel though, and looked superb. This next picture is slightly more upsetting viewing. I didn't want to get on with welding anything on the car until I knew I could lay a reliably okay weld, that requires me to have a clearer head and the ability to be a bit more patient with myself. Instead I had a bit of a think and decided to cut off the bad bit of outer arch and the back end of the outer sill to see a bit better what I was dealing with. That's also when I found out that this is a replacement sill. The top edge has a spot of weld once every 3" or so and then a skim of very hard filler, I'm pretty sure that's wrong and it should be a seam weld along the top edge. Other than that, the fitting of it is pretty good, but with no rust treatment applied behind and a surprisingly large amount of crud in the trailing edge I begin to understand much better why this has rotted out like it has. It's more solid than I expected inside. Much of the metal has surface corrosion but it's only the very lower edge that's gone thin and frilly... apart from the closing panel which is made up of two layers of badly fitting metal that didn't seem to be welded in, just fibreglassed in place. I removed the floor patch earlier today and I might do the inner sill ahead of the floor this time around. At this point I got very scared. I knew it would be a big job but all at once this felt complicated and confusing and scary. I sat and looked at it and poked it and worried for a good half hour before I gave myself a metaphorical slap and did the only sensible thing I could think of and covered the whole lot in weld through primer so I could properly see beyond the surface rust, the rot and the missing metal. I don't know how sensible an idea this was in all honesty, but it did help me figure out what to do next. Out with the gaffer tape, I 'rebuilt' the missing bits to approximately where they needed to be so I could figure out how scary a job it really was. By breaking it down into smaller chunks the whole thing became less scary. Pulling on some tailoring experience I reminded myself that this was nothing compared to a lapelled double-breasted waistcoat with four pockets and I've managed to make those before. I cut some more metal out of the floor, in one area I'd been a little too cautious with removing material and it was thin on closer inspection. The only bit I'm not sure of is that strengthening beam thing, I'm thinking it's more sensible to drill out the spot welds and remove it complete so I can remove the holed floor underneath it, but is the norm just to cut through it and reweld afterwards? Your advice welcome here. I felt more comfortable and got the angle grinder out, remembering to pay attention to how easily the cutting disc went through the metal. If it was too easy I'd cut more until there was a good amount of resistance and that took me back to full thickness metal. Surprisingly little needed to come off. The last job I did was to make two cardboard templates for the floor and inner sill and bring the spare bonnet in which has knackered hinge points. The bonnet really isn't worth repairing but it is an invaluable source of metal of comparable thickness to what the car is made of. Tomorrow I'm not sure what I'm doing, I may have a crack at the welding after a bit of practice off the car, and I may just make more panels and cut more rot out. This is probably the first time in a while that my confidence is a little shaky about DIYing a job, but I am a jack of all trades so it's likely I can get this done to a decent standard before too much longer.
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Sept 16, 2014 23:51:00 GMT
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At least you're getting on with it. You'll get there in the end. I know exactly how you feel, though. I've not really done any significant welding before, and it is time to start filling in holes on the Minor. I'm sure I'll be fine and will be right once I get going but I just need a little prod to get started haha. A friend will be overseeing me for the start of it to make sure I know what I'm doing, but just waiting on him to have time to stand around and point fingers for a few hours..
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